The Layers of Meaning in Levitus

There have been a lot of electrons sacrificed on the altar of the discussion of the Levitus ocean heat content data. The oddity seems to be that the deep ocean is gaining heat faster than the upper ocean. Here’s a typical graphic showing the issue:

This week I got to ruminating about this graphic, and a number of similar graphics I’d seen. And yesterday I realized that it wasn’t showing what I thought it was showing. Let me illustrate what I mean.